Romans 6:1-14 • No Longer a Slave
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you look in your Bibles at Romans chapter 6, Romans chapter 6.
Already Caleb read for us key verses from verses 6 on through 14. But let me tell you why the opening verses are important as well. The Apostle Paul has just said something dramatic and dangerous.
He concluded his encouragement to people of all backgrounds and bad behavior, where sin increased, grace increases all the more.
And you can hear almost a gasp, not just from Paul's enemies, but from his friends.
Paul, you can't say it that way, not where sin increases, grace abounds all the more. You're just going to give people license to sin.
Well, how does Paul respond to that?
He responds the way we remind people every Sunday that grace doesn't lead to license, but right there on your bulletins it says, "It is faith, freedom, and fuel for the Christian life." How can that be?
Let's stand and honor God's Word as we get Paul's explanation for why doesn't grace lead to more sin?
Paul writes, Romans 6 verse 1, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means?" How can we, who died to sin, still live in it?
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, united to our Savior.
What a glorious thought until we look at both sides of the coin.
Not just the resurrection, but the death too.
Both that He did for us that we might be united to Him in both.
By such You free us from our slavery. Enable us to walk with You. But help us to see how, for we struggle.
We wonder why grace doesn't lead to license, why at the same time it doesn't always seem that we have been freed from sin, either it's guilt or power. Teach us the truth and the power of the gospel again. Refresh our souls with the beauty of what Christ has done and is doing for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
One of my students explained the problem this way.
He'd gone as a graduate of Covenant Seminary, was out in the ministry, and was a youth pastor. He said what He did one Sunday in preparation for the young people's meeting that night was He wrote up on the blackboard the message that He would be teaching. The words of our passage.
"Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more." He just finished writing when one of the moms of the teens walked into the room with treats for that night's meeting. She walked across the room, looked at the board, saw what was written there, and stopped dead in her tracks.
Looked at the words.
At first as if they didn't register. And then when they registered, as though she couldn't believe what was on the board. Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more. She looked at the youth pastor directly and said, "My teen doesn't need more grace. He needs to straighten up."
We get it.
We understand.
We know that if there are no boundaries, you have a life without control.
And we know that if there is no forgiveness, there is no life of faith.
So how do you bring the two together?
Paul the apostle obviously recognizes that there is a math of the mind that says, "If God will forgive me later, why not sin now?"
But at the same time he answers that math with a chemistry of the heart that is even stronger to say what the heart believes, how it responds, is to this compulsion. If God loved me enough to send His Son to die for me, if Jesus lived, died, was crucified, dead and buried for my sake, then I'll live for Him.
There is a chemistry of the heart that is stronger than the math of the mind. And what the apostle Paul is doing in Romans 6 is he is stirring that chemistry.
How he stirs his first by taking us just to the essence of our faith, its roots, the roots of every believer as he begins to talk about the nature of our baptism. He's willing before getting there just to ask the hard question, verse 1, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" He's nobody's fool. He knows how grace can be misused, but then answers the question with clarity, "By no means." Translation, no way.
Grace doesn't give you license to sin. Why not? How can we who died, he says in verse 2, how can we who died to sin still live in it? If you perceived that what your sin was, what your past life was before your baptism was actually being partied to an Adamic nature, to that nature that was dying under the curse of God, dying you shall die, your life not capable prior to the Holy Spirit regenerating your heart, making you a follower of Jesus Christ, you were not able to do anything that honored God. You were living a life of sin and death. And if you recognize that, what would make you want to go back there? Who wants the cancer put back in? Who wants to go back in their grave if you really perceive that grace has freed you?
Then why would you want to go back to what you have been freed from?
The way the apostle makes it clear is just by the baptism and what our faith is signified in that. Do you not know, verse 3, that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into His death?
We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in nudists of life.
As Paul is taking us back, why would your faith take you somewhere other than back into the life of sin? Well remember what your baptism signified.
When you were baptized, you were buried.
Now we don't typically think of baptism that way.
We find it nice and pleasant to think about my baptism with water signifies the washing away of my sin by the blood of Jesus Christ, His penalty, paying for my guilt so that my sin is washed away.
But those who are reading Paul's letter at Rome are not just Gentiles.
They are former Jews now converts to Christianity.
And they well understand what Paul is talking about when he says, "Do you not know that when you were baptized, you were baptized into Christ's death?
You were buried with Him in baptism." How is baptism a death?
Now the Jews would have known that a baptism is just a ceremonial cleansing. It's a physical representation of a spiritual truth. And there are various baptisms described in the Bible. In Hebrews 9, it's not the amount of water that's the point being made. You have baptisms that include water and oil and ashes being sprinkled on people. Those are called baptisms. It's a ceremonial cleansing. Even Jesus and His debates with the Pharisees made the point that baptisms that they were expecting which was the pouring of water over hands or even the pouring of water over tables, neither the sprinkling nor the pouring, that those were baptisms that were not indicated to be right just by the amount of water, but by what they signified, a ceremonial cleansing.
But the fact that a good Jew would know about different kinds of baptisms that included things like sprinkling and pouring did not mean they were unaware of immersion baptisms either.
I mean, even as you would go up the Temple Mount in preparation for sacrifices, there were those little shallow pools one after another after another called the Mikvahs in which a Jew to be ceremonially clean before going into the Temple to worship would dip down and be immersed in the water just for a moment.
Why? To signify a burial.
We understand the burial and you would too if you had been a Jew or even today if you were a Muslim or a Hindu who are now saying, "I'm going to identify with Jesus Christ and the way that I show my love and loyalty to Him is I'm going to take this final step before the world, before the family, before the church, I'm going to take this step that shows where my new life and loyalty is. I'm going to be baptized." You are at the same moment saying, "My past associations, my past loyalties, my past way of life is dead to me and your family itself may say that. A Hindu family, a Jewish family, a Muslim family may say to a child who's been baptized what words? You are now what to us?
Dead to us."
Baptism was a burial of sorts, a death from past associations. But more than that, it was a signal of the death of death that prior to an association with Jesus Christ, everyone was only a child of Adam. As a child of Adam, the curse that came upon Adam, dying you will die because of your transgression. A life of dying began that would end in death. And that's the only hope of anyone who's apart from Christ in Adam. But in our baptism we are saying, "By faith, I believe that Jesus has washed away my sin and paid the penalty. And now the greatest penalty, death itself, has been put away. Though I may physically die, my soul will soar to a resurrected life with Jesus Christ. I will be one with Him forever." And that reality is saying, "Not only is the guilt of my sin, but the power of my sin is being broken, and I'm showing I believe that by my faith in the baptism that I undergo."
But it's not just a burial. What else does the apostle say the end of verse 4? "Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." There's not just a burial in baptism. You'll drown, right? You come up out of the water. There is the signification of a resurrection. They understood that as well. That regardless of the amount of water that you were using, there is still this union with Christ in His death and also in His resurrection.
We would experience new life. And so the apostle Paul says, "Listen, you're not just putting away the past.
You're assuming the present, and by the power of God, you believe the Holy Spirit will enable you not just to put your past sent away in its guilt, but in its power so that you may walk in newness of life." When I walk away from baptism, I'm saying, "There's something dead, my past, but there's something starting new, new life in Christ."
A couple of lessons for us just before we go much further.
First, this is expected of all who are Christians. You can't miss the words of verse 3. "Do you not know," says the apostle, "that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into the…?" There's just an assumption on Paul's part. If you are a believer, you have been baptized. It's not because baptism makes you a Christian. No. The blessing ring does not make you married.
But in love and loyalty, you demonstrate to the world your love and loyalty.
So the baptism of believers is not making you a Christian, but Christians from the time of Jesus' forward have said, "I'm going to show my family. I'm going to show my friends. I'm going to show the church. I'm going to show the world that my faith is in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm made right by what He does, and I'm going to show the world." That's my faith.
There's something else that's a lesson from this, and it is that our baptism should signify a life change.
"We too might walk in newness of life," says the apostle, "as a consequence of our baptism." Not because the baptism itself is changing you, but because it signifies your faith in who changes you. Christ was buried for your sin's sake. That's past. But He was risen to give you new life, new hope, new power, and you rise expecting to walk in newness of life. I think of the significance of that understanding of the new walk into new life.
As I was reading recently the autobiography of Anna LeBaron, a name not many of you will know, but you may know the name of her father, Erville LeBaron.
Mass murderer, serial killer, polygamist of a strange cult out in the west.
Anna lived a dying life all of her childhood, knowing abuse and shame and fear and enslavement of mind and emotions to the insanity of her father.
At some point her father was arrested, imprisoned, and died there.
And Anna's mother, who had been on the run with Erville, now not knowing what to do, decided to go back to the cult, to what was familiar, what seemed comfortable, what seemed like shelter.
But Anna suddenly realized what that would mean, back to dying.
And she did not want to go. She called a family member who had escaped the cult some years earlier, and after that phone call remembered the key words of the person on the other end of the phone. She writes, "She said to me, just start walking.
I hung up the phone, said Anna, and I walked out of my house with just my clothes on my back."
When she met that family member, came to pick her up in the car, Anna wrote, "I learned something finally about love and acceptance, different from anything I'd ever experienced. I learned from Christians in my school and from my new home what God's love for me meant. I learned how Jesus, God's Son, was sent to the earth to die on the cross for my sin. I learned that Jesus lived and was crucified and was raised from the dead. God took the broken heart of a 13-year-old girl in His hands, and since then He has been restoring the wholeness of a life that had been smashed to pieces."
If that's what you recognize, that prior to faith, that burial of what was in your past, that you were living a life of dying, that God has rescued you from that, that at some point you walked away from a baptism and it was walking away from a life that was awful, that was entrapping, that was enslaving, that was killing you in terms of your spirit, and now you've been released from that, why would you ever want to walk back there? If grace has freed you, why would you go back there? It's what we are to remember in our baptism. Something died, but something is alive now, and it's that life that I claim. And for some of us, I think about Anna's testimony, she had to learn to walk in newness of life just by walking away from death.
Some of you need to start walking.
The entrapment of your own sin, of your selfishness, of habits, of addictions, of relationships, you just have to recognize them for what they are. They are the dying.
And for that reason, identifying them to say, "That's not my life anymore. I have been set free. That's dead to me. I walk a new life in Jesus Christ, and you need to start walking into the true life that God has designed for you." The faith in what Christ has done has to actually be exercised in the freedom that God wants you to have. And He expresses that by His apostle, explaining that what the baptism symbolizes, a death and a resurrection, is actually to be lived in the new life that we have in Christ.
If we in baptism are signifying that we died with Christ and we were raised with Christ, we are showing that there's a union of our soul and our spirit with Christ Himself, because He died and He was resurrected. We die and we're brought to new life.
But if that's the case, this union with Christ is actually a key to understanding our true freedom and our true power.
Because it signifies, number one, that we are united to Christ in such a way that our old self was crucified, the self that couldn't help it, the self that did it, the self that was dying.
It is dead. Paul writes, verse 5, "For if we have been united with Him," that is Jesus, "in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His."
Was it mean to be united with Christ in His death? Verse 6, "We know that our old self," before I was a believer, before the Holy Spirit entered my heart, before I was walking in faith, "we know that our old self was crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. The old self was crucified."
It's a horrible image, almost as though the notion that we were buried with Christ is too clean, too easy, that you won't really feel the significance of it. But the apostles say, "I want you to picture your Savior, thorns in His brow, nails in His hands and feet, the spear that pierces His side, the blood that pools at His feet." It is not the blood of another. It is yours.
You were crucified with Christ, as though the apostles wanting you to feel that old self, whether you were victim or whether you were abuser or whether you were the one who just was guilty of that which you know was not right before it, that is dead.
And the words that he picks are remarkable. I mean just think, verse 6, "We know that our old self was crucified."
Verse 5, "We were united with Him in a death like His." Verse 4, "We were buried with Him by baptism, crucified, dead, and buried."
Now you've heard those words before in that order, crucified, dead, and buried.
Where do you hear those words frequently in that order? That is in the apostles' creed, right? Identifying what Jesus did, He was crucified, dead, and buried. But now the apostle doesn't apply it to Jesus, but to us to say, "I want you to perceive this reality, your old self, that which you're ashamed of, that's what you're guilty of, whatever."
It's crucified, dead, and buried, as though the apostle is stopping on the grave to have you perceive the reality, the finishness, the completeness of your old self being dead as Christ is dead. Because if that's the case, then everything that condemns you in conscience as well as practice is dead, crucified, killed, truly not applied to you anymore. And it's not just that your old self was crucified, says the apostle, your old slavery was crucified at the very same moment. The middle of verse 6, "This crucifixion that we had with Him was in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing."
The body of sin, that record count of mine, it's now no longer against me because Christ paid the price.
But the fact that it was brought to nothing is a word that actually means de-energized, as though the power has been taken away at the same time. And that's what the apostle is wanting us to recognize, that guilt and power have both been crucified, dead and buried. We sing so often without even thinking of the words of Rock of Ages.
"From thy riven side which flowed, the blood in the water, from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin, Lord, the double cure.
Cleanse me from sin's guilt and what?
Power."
It's not just that guilt is removed. That's glorious.
Power removed too by the work that Christ is doing in us.
I think of the implications in a lot of our life. Kathy and I lived in a house that was right on the side of a major highway, which was great for our kids watching the trucks go by and counting the cars.
It sounded like waves at night if you need to get to sleep.
But one night the waves stopped.
A truck driver distracted by his phone topped a hill and slammed into a line of stopped traffic in front of him.
Killed four people.
Was never charged.
Why?
Because he died too.
And you don't bring charges against the dead.
You were crucified, dead, and buried. What's the first lesson?
There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That what was true of us, my sin, my guilt, the penalty that should have come upon me is dead, crucified, buried.
Because Christ finished that work because my old self is dead.
But it's not just that the guilt is gone. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I want you to understand what I'm saying. It's not just that the truck driver had no charges brought against him. At the same moment I will tell you, he no longer sits at the wheel.
He's no longer in charge. He no longer is in the driver's seat.
And when we recognize that our sin is crucified, dead, and buried, that old self that was under the control of sin, we are saying not only is the guilt gone, but sin no longer sits in the driver's seat of my life or yours. We are no longer slaves.
Satan wants you to believe that. Satan wants you to believe you have no control. It's biology and background and behavior patterns that control you. And the gospel is coming as we are being told, "No, listen. What did your baptism signify?
You were buried, that old self, that out of control self, that sinful nature self, that only able to sin self. That's crucified, dead, and buried." But it's not just that something's been taken away.
Something has been added in place. You didn't just stay buried. As Christ did not stay buried, He rose to new life. And so Paul writes in verse 8, "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also will live with Him."
Now, you may just kind of read right past that as kind of being, "Okay, I believe there will be an ultimate resurrection. There will be pie in the sky, by and by. I'll rise in the resurrection someday, and I'll be with Jesus someday."
But that's not what the apostle is saying in its entirety. No, just as there is a present death of the old self, there is a present life of Christ in you if you are united to Him. Look at verse 9. "We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.
Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death He died, He died to sin. It's for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.
Present tense, so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."
You're united to Jesus now. He is alive now. You must consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to Christ right now. It's not just that death has been extracted. Life has been put in its place. And if that is the case, what does it mean? It means that the power of the resurrected Lord, the Holy Spirit, is now present in you to enable you to live the life that you think is actually impossible.
Greater is He that's in you than He that's in the world. That's what John said. What was he meaning? He was meaning, listen, you think, Satan actually comes to you and says, "You can't help it.
You can't stop. You can't be fixed. Change is not possible. You've lived this pattern too long. You've lived this life too long." And the Holy Spirit comes along by the power of God in His Word and says, "No!
Greater is He that's in you than He that's in the world. Tomorrow doesn't have to be like yesterday.
Real change is possible. You must believe that. Because if you don't believe you can have victory, you've already lost the battle."
And so the gospel is coming as the apostle is speaking with tenderness and force at the very same moment to say, "You must know who you really are. You must be convinced of this, that Christ indwells you, that you have Holy Spirit, resurrection, power, unlike your old self."
So Paul will say in Galatians 2, 20, what? "I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives," where does He live?
"In me and the life that I live in the flesh." Now in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. He died, but He rose and He lives in me. And the power of sin in my life has been broken, crucified, dead and buried. Not just the guilt, the power. And now by faith I claim the freedom that is mine. I am not a victim of Satan. I am not controlled by sin. I am not a slave.
I am united to Christ. And because I am united to Christ, I am a child of God with the resurrection power of Jesus Christ indwelling me. That gives me the love of God by my union with Christ and the power of His Spirit to work within me.
I think just how the examples of our society help us sense it and tell one another the gospel.
Some of you may have seen the news story of Joshua Schwabenbauer. Hope I have that name right.
A firefighter who lost his life in Florida.
But his heart was saved.
And in an amazing heart transplant put in the body of Adelia Harris.
And the reason that story made the news is that a news crew began to record the reactions of Joshua's family as they listened through a stethoscope to his heart beating in Adelia's chest, giving her new life.
And as the parents and the family and the friends of Joshua began to hear his heart in Adelia's body, they just fell on her with tears and longing embraced, recognizing this was the new life that Joshua had provided.
It's just so good. You all know, recognize, right? Of course, the New Testament name for Joshua is what?
It's just Jesus.
And here are we dying in the curse of Adam that we all bear. But as the guilt and the power of sin has been broken, it's that heart of Jesus, the resurrected Lord by his Holy Spirit that now beats in us. And when I know that, I begin to recognize I not only have the love of the Father who falls on me in the embrace, knowing all my sin, all my past, all my dying, but now his son lives in me. I have the identity of his child.
And when I know that, it gives me encouragement to walk in newness of life for a Father who loves me and embraces me, knowing the worst about me. Ultimately, it is this gospel truth that is not just freedom from sin, but ultimately it is the fuel of the Christian life. Why doesn't grace just lead me back into sin?
Notice when I recognize what God has done, I'm able to claim my identity.
What does the apostle say, verse 11 again? You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. If you're dead, but you are united to the living Lord Jesus, what is your new identity?
You are that same child of God. I'm crucified with Christ. I no longer live. Who lives? Christ lives. Where? In me.
You must consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. It means the first step in true spiritual victory, the fuel of the Christian life, is to claim your identity. Do not let your past name you. Do not let your friends name you. Do not let your failures name you. God alone names you. You are my child. And when I know that identity, it changes everything. I begin to see myself for the hope that God intends. I'm encouraged by His love in ways that are profound.
I begin to recognize you are not your sin.
You are not your shame.
You are not your adultery. You are not your abortion. You are not your addiction. You are not.
You have a new identity. You are not your failures. You are not your successes. You are not your championships. You are not your losses.
You are not your title. You are not your promotions. You are not your grades. You are not the school you got into. You are not the school you didn't get into.
You are not the one you marry. You're not the one that you slept with.
You're not the house that you live in. You're not the neighborhood you can't get in. You're not the race you won. They're not the race you lost.
Above all of those things, what is your identity?
I am a child of God.
Jesus is my brother, I'm united in him. He indwells me. I'm a member of the family of God. I know the past. I know the problems. That's why I was baptized, to show my faith. I believe that's dead. I believe I'm walking in newness of life with the power of sin as well as the guilt of sin gone.
How does it change us? You know, I just have to talk about other people. I think about myself. You know, we just came a few moments ago out of a congregational meeting. And I think, you know, all right, the numbers are not all that I wish they were. And what is my temptation?
To identify myself by somebody else's number expectations.
I am or I'm not valuable, worthy, significant, because we hit or didn't hit certain numbers.
And I'm in a church and you all are forgiving. And I recognize some of you don't live that world. That while I will heap on myself some sense of unworthiness,
that others of you have to live it a very different way. In businesses where your position or your income or your career or your appearances mark your significance, your worth, your value.
The pressure on your self-image, on your self-esteem.
The pressure of sleeplessness, the pressure of the numbers.
It pushes, it pushes, it presses until we can't perceive who we are anymore. We measure ourselves by our successes, our failures, or the mark on our office door.
Paul is saying that is not who you are.
I think of the message again of Anna LeBaron, who writes about what happened to her. She said, "As a child, I only knew myself
as the polygamist daughter.
But when I came to truly know and experience, God is my father.
He shattered the evil, all-consuming grip my earthly father had on me and my identity.
I began to find my identity as a daughter of God
and learn to experience true freedom in and through Jesus, Christ alone."
It's what you and I have to gain again and again, right? We go through life and we think we've got it, and then we start to measure ourselves by other people's opinions or by our successes or failures. And we have to remember it. No, no, no, I'm a child of God, eternally, fully, freely. I'm a child of God. And if that's the case, then I don't just claim my identity. I begin to wield the power of that truth. That's what the apostle is saying. Verse 13, "Do not," no, excuse me, verse 12, "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for righteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life
and your members to God as instruments for righteousness."
If not just the guilt, but the power of sin has been crushed,
don't give up. Don't yield to the sin to say, "I can't fight. I can't fix." No, listen.
Don't just yield to it. Acknowledge who you really are. You are a child of God, indwelt by His Spirit. Don't surrender to slavery again. You don't want to go there. God doesn't want you to go there. Believe that you have Holy Spirit, power, and do battle as you wield your power. Present your bodies to God as instruments of His righteousness, that God has chosen you, your gifts, your talents, your personality.
The ravages are the rewards of your past to all go into this wonderful matrix of representing Him to a hurting, broken, fallen world. And whether your position is one in the church where you demonstrate to others the truths of the Word, or you sing from the choir the truths of the Word, or you minister to children in Sunday school, or you're just that neighborhood mom to homeless children,
or you go to the prisons to represent Jesus to people who wonder if God could ever love them again.
Are you just a father or a mother who confesses to your children?
I repent of the testimony I've had before you,
but God has forgiven me, and I ask you to forgive me.
And I know I can do that because I have to tell you something. My identity is not in what you think my child, my identity is in Jesus.
And I'm right with Him. And that's why I can tell you, even of my own shame in dealing with you, I'm a child of God.
And when you begin to wield that spiritual power, what you're ultimately doing is you're just responding to grace.
It's the very last verse. What does the apostle do to finally stir that chemistry of the heart? He doesn't just tell you your faith and your freedom and the fuel of the gospel, but he just wants you to act on it. And so he says, "For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace."
You're not under condemnation because you can't do the performance that everybody expects. No, that's not what identifies you anymore.
You're under grace so that the great rallying cry of the apostle in just a chapter two will be, "Because you're under grace, there is, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Who are you? You are a child of God, and as your heart is stirred in love for the God who made you that, you want to live for Him.
And you don't want to go back to death.
And He's actually given you the power to live for Him out of a heart of love and power because He gave Himself for you.
Beginning of this last week, I was in California with some people here from the church, and we were explaining again what is this ministry of grace that we hope goes from this church to other cities, to the world, so that even now, I forgot to tell you, we're five days a week in China now. What's happening in this service around the world?
And one of our producers who was trying to… What are you guys saying? I mean, what's unique about what you are saying? And she said, "You know, I tried to explain it to my daughter
that what you actually believe is that grace is so powerful, it will change people's hearts so that they want to live for Him. And the gospel is not just about boundaries.
It's about boundless love that makes you want to live for Jesus."
She said, "You know, when I told my daughter that, she said,
"Wow, they ought to preach that in the church."
They sure should.
It is the glory and the goodness of the gospel, as the grace of God
is the basis of our faith, the provision of our freedom,
and the fuel of the heart to live for Jesus. May God so fill you with His grace that you love walking with Him. Father, fill our hearts again, we pray, with the profound and precious truths of the gospel, that we who are made slaves by the testimony of Satan, by the testimonies of our own hearts that sometimes don't believe the gospel, would believe it again and claim the faith and the freedom and the fuel that Jesus provides and makes us no longer slaves. Grant us the beauty and the freedom of the gospel, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.